November 11, 2014
Tuesday

Time’s but a golden wind that shakes the grass.
— Siegfried Sassoon, 1886-1967
English poet and soldier
from “Absolution”

It is Veterans Day in the United States. It is also the anniversary of my mother’s death. I have used this space from time to time to commemorate that. Here, for example, is the eulogy I gave for her. My father was a veteran of World War II. Here is one tribute to his service that I have written. (I was using the apostrophe for the name of the holiday then. I have decided not to use it today.) You have to click on the underlined words to read those pieces.

Today I am honoring a different veteran., Leslie Dean Taylor, 1922-2003. Here is part of what I wrote about him in 2005:

Leslie Dean Taylor was nearing fifty when I met him. He taught business subjects – typing, bookkeeping, office practice, business writing. He was unmarried, bookish and shy, a private man who kept to himself, attended church and Sunday school every week, and still lived in the house he’d grown up in. His classroom was just down the hall from mine and, looking back, I would say that, of all my new colleagues, he would be among those I had the least in common with. Nevertheless, he became my friend, doing most of the work to establish the relationship and keep it going.

You can read the rest of it here. Although I had attended his memorial service in 2003, I did not attend the burial, which was private. On October 3, I found myself near the cemetery where I knew he was buried. It was near the beginning of my wobble into depression (which is to say it was near the beginning of the depression).

That day I was intent on making progress toward a deadline on November 29. I packed my materials, and a nutritious lunch, and set out for my studio, where is not the call of other things to do. But first, I had to return some overdue DVDs and books. Although I can use any branch of that library, and there is one near my studio, I chose the branch where I had actually obtained the items. I arrived there to find that it is closed on Fridays. I felt chagrined. As I wrote in my journal, I don’t know what it was I could have done in there, nor do I know what noting it has to do with the rest of the story.

Clearly, it has something to do with my pattern of procrastination and avoidance, my fear of falling into the work I want to do. When I left the closed library, I didn’t actually know what I was going to do next. At length, I found myself* at the entrance of Rolling Green Cemetery in Camp Hill.

Here I need a long, lush description of Rolling Green. The wide lawns  really are rolling, and green, with mostly flat markers, regulation vases, and the unused parts noticeable because there are no vases and no dimples where the markers are, just the rolling green.

The office was open, so I went in and asked for the location of Mr. Taylor’s grave. I was given a map and a brochure. Mr. Taylor is in Block Q of the Garden of the Resurrection. I drove along the winding, tree-lined avenues toward the back part. I passed a figure sitting on a lawn chair beside a plot that had several floral displays on it. I made a note to return to see if I could figure out who was keeping vigil for whom.

Even with the map, I had to orient myself first to the statue of the risen Christ in the middle of the section, his outstretched left arm pointing toward Block Q. Then I had to determine how the rows were laid out. Mr. Taylor’s bronze plaque gives the facts of his World War II service and his dates.

According to the rules of Rolling Green Cemetery, all floral items are cleaned off on October 15. One may place potted plants three days before certain prescribed holidays, including Veterans Day. They must be removed three days after the holiday. So on Sunday I took a small plant there. On Friday, I’ll retrieve it.

The Leonard Cohen poem I quoted for Mr. Taylor in 2005 said of my friend who lived and died in mighty silence that he left no book, nor son, nor lover to mourn. Except he did leave a book of sorts, his commonplace books that I was privileged to see at his memorial service. The truth is, my visit to his gravesite a month ago was not all that random. I had been thinking about him in connection with resurrecting the commonplace I have kept from time to time as part of my silkentent domain.

When I do, one of the first new items will be a passage I thought to copy out into my journal the day before my visit to Rolling Green. From “Rising Tide,” a story in Starting Over, Elizabeth Spencer’s new collection. (Ms. Spencer turned 93 in July.) The story concerns Mrs. Tenny, a woman in her 90s, who recalls an old family story for her granddaughter, who asks why:

“Just thought of it. I don’t know why. I just lie here and think of things. You’d be surprised what things I think about.”

*An allusion to Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in which the narrator “finds” himself at the mansion of gloom where he will have to confront his demons.